Intellectuals and Power

In this important new book, the leading philosopher François Laruelle examines the role of intellectuals in our societies today, specifically with regards to criminal justice. He argues that, rather than concerning themselves with abstract philosophical notions like justice, truth and violence, intellectuals should focus on the human victims. Drawing on his influential theory of ‘non-philosophy’, he shows how we can submit the theorizing of intellectuals to the scrutiny of the everyday suffering of the victims of crime. In the course of a wide-ranging discussion with Philippe Petit, Laruelle suspends the presumed authority of intellectuals by challenging the image of the ‘dominant intellectual’ exemplified by philosophers such as Sartre, Foucault, Lyotard and Debray. In place of domination, he puts forward instead a theory of ‘determination’: the determined intellectual is one whose character is conditioned by his relationship to the victim, rather than one who attempts to dominate the victim’s experience through a process of theorizing. While philosophy consistently takes the voice away from victims of suffering, non-philosophy is able to construct a theory of violence and crime that gives voice to the victim. This highly original book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary French philosophy and all those concerned with justice in the modern world.

Politics & Social Sciences

François Laruelle

Philosophy

Polity

General Theory of Victims

The most accessible expression of François Laruelle's non-philosophical, or 'non-standard', thought, General Theory of Victims forges a new role for contemporary philosophers and intellectuals by rethinking their relation to victims. A key text in recent continental philosophy, it is indispensable for anyone interested in the debates surrounding materialism, philosophy of religion, and ethics.Transforming Joseph de Maistre's adage that the executioner is the cornerstone of society, General Theory of Victims instead proposes the victim as the cornerstone of humanity and the key figure for contemporary thought. Laruelle condemns philosophy for participating in and legitimating the great persecutions of the twentieth century, and lays out a new vision of victim-oriented ethics. To do this, he engages the resources of both quantum physics and theology in order to adapt a key concept of non-philosophy, Man-in-person, for a new understanding of the victim. As Man-in-person, the victim is no longer exclusively defined by suffering, but has the capacity to rise up against the world?s persecution. Based on this, Laruelle develops a new ethical role for the intellectual in which he does not merely 'represent' the victim, but imitates or 'clones' it, thereby assisting the victim?s uprising within thought.

Are the things of this world given to thought? Are things really meant to be known, to be taken as the objective manifestations of a transcendental conditioning power? The Western philosophical tradition, according to Francois Laruelle, presupposes just this transcendental constitution of the real--a presupposition that exalts philosophy itself as the designated recipient of the transcendental gift. Philosophy knows what things really are because things--all things--are given to philosophy to be known. Laruelle s trenchant essays show how this presupposition controls even the ostensibly radical critiques of the philosophical tradition that have proliferated in the postmodern aftermath of Nietzsche and Heidegger. For these critiques persist in assuming that the disruptive other is in some way given to their own discourse--which shows itself thereby to be still philosophical. An effective critique of philosophy must be non-philosophical. It must, according to Laruelle, suspend the presupposition that otherness is given to be known, that thought has a fundamentally differential structure. Non-philosophy begins not with difference, not with subject and object, but with the positing of the One. From this axiomatic starting point, non-philosophy takes as its material philosophy, rethought according to the One. The non-philosophy project does not, like so much postmodern philosophy, herald the end of philosophy. It takes philosophy as an occasion to raise the question of another kind of thought--one that, instead of differentially relating to the world that it presupposes, asserts that it is ultimately, in the flesh, at One with what it can never know. Early Praise for The Non-Philosophy Project "Of the post-1960s generation of modern French thinkers, FranÃ§ois Laruelle is the most difficult and arguably the most probing. He claims with great cogency that all philosophy assumes certain axioms, by analogy with Euclidean geometry. These axioms ensure that every philosophical system is a more-or-less arbitrary, more-or-less plausible decision as to one ontological factor that 'conditions' and another that is 'conditioned.' Accordingly, Laruelle raises the question of whether there could not be a philosophy or philosophies entirely other to 'philosophy' as we know it, based upon different axiomatizations, and especially a refusal of the conditioning/conditioned duality. The debate that must now ensue is whether or not some pre-modern, theological, and non-western philosophies were not indeed already 'non-philosophies' and whether a 'non-philosophy' must necessarily assume a materialist guise. But whatever the answers given here, Laruelle has moved the theoretical conversation well beyond poststructuralism and postmodernism. He is a great thinker, and we are all deeply in his debt." --John Milbank, Professor of Religion, Politics, and Ethics at the University of Nottingham "FranÃ§ois Laruelle, uniquely, has probed the question of materialism to its very depths--to a point where monism challenges rationalism and the absoluteness of matter becomes a religious absolute, accessible only by gnosis. After his work, the world will forever look topsy-turvy. But maybe just this insight will help us to set it right in an altogether new and unexpected fashion." --Catherine Pickstock, Reader in Philosophy and Theology, Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge

The Non-Philosophy Project: Essays by François Laruelle

Telos Press Publishing

A rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy, and art, so as to discover an essence of photography that precedes its historical, technological, and aesthetic conditions.
If philosophy has always understood its relation to the world according to the model of the instantaneous flash of a photographic shot, how can there be a “philosophy of photography” that is not viciously self-reflexive?
Challenging the assumptions made by any theory of photography that leaves its own “onto-photo-logical” conditions uninterrogated, Laruelle thinks the photograph non-philosophically, so as to discover an essence of photography that precedes its historical, technological and aesthetic conditions.
The Concept of Non-Photography develops a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy, and art, and introduces the reader to all of the key concepts of Laruelle's “non-philosophy.”

The Concept of Non-Photography

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Urbanomic/Sequence Press

Preface to the Four Nights. Last Spring, members of the Cascadian School gathered for a discussion on abattoirs, illumination, and misanthropy. Our findings tended not to reveal anything we didn't already suspect, which is as good an excuse as any for reconvening, one year later. And so Daniel, Nicola, Alex, and myself have gathered here for four nights, to talk about mysticism. Our take-off point is a short text by François Laruelle entitled Du Noir univers, published in 1988 in the journal La Décision philosophique. The text has four parts, and each of us have decided to speak alongside each of those four parts, on four consecutive nights.--Eugene Thacker

Dark Nights of the Universe (Novo Pan Klub)

Eugene Thacker

Daniel Colucciello Barber

Nicola Masciandaro

Aaron Metté

Alexander R. Galloway

[NAME] Publications

RO30300498. THEORIE GENERALE DES VICTIMES. 2012. In-8. Broché. Bon état, Couv. convenable, Dos satisfaisant, Intérieur frais. 212 pages.. . . . Classification Dewey : 100-PHILOSOPHIE ET DISCIPLINES CONNEXES

Théorie générale des victimes

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

1001 NUITS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by François Laruelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by François Laruelle